Never Look Back
by Obsidian Fire
Summary: At the Valley of the End, Sasuke agrees to come back with Naruto. Naruto is banished and Sasuke finds the mission orders Itachi received the night of the Uchiha Massacre. He tells Sakura and Anko about them and the three of them join Naruto as nukenin.
1. Bonds

AN: DON'T WORRY! This is NOT my answer to Perfect Lionheart's Missing Hokage challenge! I've seen way to many of those and I hate sticking to guidelines and cliches in writing. (If you've read my other fic Namikaze Sasuke you hopefully know that already.) As far as I can tell, no one's done this type of fic with this combination of characters yet and it looked interesting and fun to write and plots started floating around in my head. Hope you enjoy it!

For those of you re-reading this, not much has changed except Danzou's motives.

* * *

Chapter 1**  
Bonds**

"You prevented me from hitting your heart at the last second, but that was pointless." Sasuke's taunt rang in Naruto's ears. "I've impaled your right lung." Sasuke pulled his arm out of Naruto's body. "You cannot use your right arm now. It is even difficult to breathe. You cannot make seals or use that jutsu." Now Naruto was only standing because Sasuke was holding him up by the throat. Sasuke thought of the Mangekyou Sharingan he would obtain when he killed Naruto. "It's finished." He brought his other hand up to Naruto's throat to choke him to death.

Before his hand reached Naruto's throat, Naruto caught the hand and threw Sasuke away from him. Miraculously he was still standing. Red chakra, more thick and powerful than Orochimaru's, seeped out of Naruto and Sasuke wanted it. _With this power I can surly defeat my brother, Mangekyou Sharingan or not. _"Naruto, what is this red chakra and where did you get such power and how can I get it?"

Naruto laughed. "You know, you're the only person who has ever wanted that power. Since you want it so much I'll tell you what it is. It's the power of the nine-tailed fox. So do you want it now?" he sarcastically asked.

"Yes," said Sasuke in a heartbeat. "I don't care who's power it is as long as I can kill my brother with it. Now give it to me!"

Naruto started laughing. He could not believe what he was hearing. "You're the first person who hasn't been afraid of this power. Everyone else ignores me because I have it and all you want is for me to give it to you." He laughed again.

"Who would ignore you because of it?You should be the strongest ninja of all. Now let me have it!" Even though the only thing Sasuke cared about was the power he could have, he wondered who wanted Naruto dead for having the power of the nine-tailed fox.

Now Naruto laughed even harder. "The nine-tailed fox was sealed into me the day I was born. There's no way to take it out of me. If there were, I would have given it to you the second you said you wanted it. It's done nothing more than give me the most retched existence possible."

"What?" Sasuke didn't know a lot about Naruto apart from the missions they went on together and from what he had seen, Naruto didn't have a very bad life except that he didn't have any parents. "How could you have a bad life? You were always smiling and laughing and you never suffered any pain!"

"Pain!" Naruto's face was now filled with a pain and anguish that could only come about by experiencing long years of suffering. "I've felt more pain then you ever have! How would you feel if every day of your life people ignored your existence? How would you feel if almost nobody cared about you and the few people who did care about you didn't show it because they couldn't? And the only way to protect yourself from the loneliness was to pretend that the way they treat you doesn't matter. And the entire time you don't know why you are treated this way and when you do find out, you are amazed you aren't dead yet and sometimes wish you were because it would be easier than enduring the loneliness that they thrust upon you. How would you feel?" After his last outburst, Naruto sat on the water and wrapped his arms around himself. He was silently crying out all the years of emotions he had hidden from everyone.

Sasuke knew the pain in Naruto's face when he first started talking. Every time he thought of the massacre of his clan he felt a shadow of it go across his face. But that was all his pain was in comparison to Naruto's, a shadow. _He's right. We truly are brothers. We both have gone through the same loss and felt the same loneliness. The only difference between us is when and why we lost our families and how much loneliness and anger we have gone through because of it. But if we truly are __brothers, why hasn't he tried to get revenge on the people who harmed him. For him it would be so easy and he has all the power he needs. _He decided to answer Naruto's question. "If I had gone through all of that, I would have taken revenge on the people who caused my loneliness. That's what I would have done if I were you."

Naruto looked up at him, his cheeks wet from crying. "I'm already doing that. I'm taking my revenge on them."

Sasuke looked at him with bewilderment. "You are? The last thing I see is someone who wants to make the people who made him feel pain suffer in the same way he did."

Naruto shook his head. "That's one way to take revenge and I'm not taking it in that way. That would be too easy and nobody would change the way they thought or acted. Besides, I wouldn't get anything out of it either, just the knowledge that they deserved what they got and I would ultimately prove that I am exactly what they said I was; the nine-tailed fox in human form who wants death and destruction and nothing else.

"The way I'm taking revenge is a lot harder than that and I might never get it. But even if I don't get it, I'll get a lot out more of it; the people who ignored me will notice me and the people who do like me will be able to show it. Ultimately, I'll prove to them that their initial take on me was wrong. That instead of me being the back-stabbing, good-for-nothing person they thought I would become, they'll all acknowledge me for being a good, strong shinobi who is loyal to their village. The only way that I can see them doing that though, is by being so good and strong and loyal that they can't help but acknowledge me as that. That's why I want to be Hokage. It's my revenge on the village for ignoring me all these years." When Naruto finished, he had a fierce look of determination on his face that said he would do what he just said or die trying.

Sasuke was impressed. He had always known that revenge was a dark road and rarely gave the avenger any peace in the end, but as it was the only way he knew, he would follow it wherever it led, whether that be in Konoha or to Orochimaru. Naruto was an avenger as well, but his road was neither dark nor was his end unknown. His way was full of light and to whatever end he came, he would have fulfillment. _If he knew any way for me to have revenge on Itachi without having to walk the dark path Itachi laid out for me, I would gladly take it. _His next thought was unexpected. _I never thought I would be asking the person I considered not even worthy to fight seriously how to fulfill my ambition. How ironic. _"Naruto, if you know so much about how to get revenge without going over the edge..." here Sasuke faltered. "If you know so much, will you tell me how to get my revenge with out going over the edge?"

Naruto looked surprised. "What? You want me to tell you how to get revenge? I thought you were the avenger, not me."

"Naruto, somehow you figured out a better way to get revenge than I ever could. I want revenge, but I don't want the kind that will leave me unfulfilled when I finally get it. Will you..." _I hope he knows how difficult this is for me! _"Will you help me get revenge the same way you are getting revenge?"

Naruto paused. "Yeah. I'll help you." The red chakra was almost gone and there was now the beginning of the familiar grin on his face. "I'll help you once we get off this river and onto dry land. The fox used my chakra reserves to heal my lung and I can't stay up on the water any longer."

Sasuke snorted and picked Naruto up. Naruto's last comment had broken the last bits of the ice that were left over from their fight and brought them back to the old relationship they had as members of Team 7. He put Naruto on his back and walked up the cliffs to the Nation of Fire side of the Valley of the End.

* * *

Half an hour later, Sasuke and Naruto were comfortably leaning against two trees with a fire in between them. It would be hard to guess they had been in a fight to the death with each other less than an hour before.

"So," Naruto started, "You said you wanted me to help you get revenge the same why I'm getting revenge. What do you mean by that?"

"Well," Sasuke looked away from Naruto into the past. What he had to tell him next was going to be painful. "After he killed everyone in my family, Itachi told me that I wasn't even worth killing. He said that if I wanted to kill him, I would have to live a miserable life and hate him, I would have to survive through the ugliness of life and live an unsightly life. And then he said that the only way he would think I was worthy to come before him was if I had his eyes." By now, tears were silently falling down Sasuke's face. He turned to Naruto. "Do you think you can find a way to get revenge on him without going down the path he laid out for me?"

Naruto thought for a moment and then said, "Wait, what? You're brother kills everyone in his own family except for you and tells you how to get revenge on him. You then commit yourself to following what he said to get your revenge on him. Why are you following the advice of an enemy, especially when that advice deals with how you should ultimately kill them. If I were you and I wanted to get revenge on him, I would probably do the opposite of what he said. Get what I'm saying?"

"Yeah." Sasuke tried to see what his brother had said to him in light of the advice Naruto had given him. "I guess what that means is that I shouldn't live with killing him as my sole goal in life and instead let the past be the past and live life with hope for a better future for myself and my clan. It's not that I shouldn't kill him if we meet up again, it's that I shouldn't kill him in exchange for all that I could do and be apart from that. Is that what you're trying to say?"

"Yeah, only you said it so much better than I did." Naruto got up and stretched. "Well, seeing as you're coming back to Konoha we'd better get going. Baa-chan made it seem as if Sound kidnapped you or something instead of you willingly going with them so you should be fine."

"We're not going yet." Sasuke had been debating something ever since he had acknowledged Naruto as a brother and he had finally made a decision.

"Why not? There's no reason to stay here." Naruto was puzzled.

Sasuke took a deep breath. "When you told me how much pain you had experienced I realized you were right. We are brothers. The only people we can truly understand and be understood by is each other." Here he paused. "Which is why I want you to be my brother not just because of that but by name and blood."

"Huh?" Naruto looked at him in astonishment. "What do you mean by that?"

"The Uchiha have a special jutsu that allows them to pass their defining traits, namely the sharingan and the affinity to fire jutsu, on to other people. From that point on, they are considered members of the Uchiha clan. Obviously it's only used on people who the Uchiha can completely trust, usually more than their own family. I trust you that much because you are the only person who didn't fear me enough to keep me from making the wrong decision. So do you want to be my brother?"

"Of course! Wasn't I the one who said we were brother's in the first place?"

"Yeah. Come over here and bare your right bicep. This is going to take a while."

Naruto went over to Sasuke and rolled up his sleeve. As he moved, Sasuke could see the fist shaped scar he had caused with his chidori. It hurt him to know that whenever someone asked Naruto how he got it, he would have to point to Sasuke and say, "He did it."

Once Naruto was sitting next to him, Sasuke cut his own finger and wrote the kanji for Uchiha on Naruto's bicep with his blood. He went though a long string of hand seals before channeling chakra into the blood and into Naruto's body.

Naruto yelped as he felt the chakra go through him and leave his chakra coils burning in its wake. "What did you do to me? Sasuke? Sasuke!" He reached down to catch Sasuke who had collapsed on the ground. "Are you all right?"

"Yeah. I will be. It's just chakra depletion." Sasuke grunted and took a look at Naruto's arm. "It worked."

"How do you know?"

"The blood disappeared into your body and I'm suffering from chakra depletion like I should be..." Sasuke grunted out the words and passed out.

* * *

Kakashi raced through the forest following his dogs. _I hope I'm not too late._ He shuddered at the thought of what his two students could do to each other if he was. After a while, Pakkun stopped him.

"There are two Naruto scents," he said. Kakashi arched his visible eyebrow. "One is going to the Valley of the End and one is coming towards us. Which one do you want me to follow?"

_However the fight turned out, he was well enough to walk back. He survived._ Kakashi sighed in relief. "The one coming towards us." Pakkun nodded and altered his course.

After a few minuets, Kakashi saw Naruto slowly walking through the forest. He sighed in relief when he saw that Naruto had Sasuke on his back. Kakashi ran to them and saw that Naruto was almost to the point of passing out. "Are you okay?" he asked when he reached them. Naruto nodded and Kakashi made a kage bushin to take an unconscious Sasuke from him. "Did you bring him back by force or..."

"No," Naruto interrupted, "he chose to come back. I just showed him that he isn't..." Naruto passed out and Kakashi carried him and Sasuke back to Konoha.

* * *

Shizune ran as fast as she dared to the waiting room. "Tsunade-sama!" Tsunade, Shikaku, Shikamaru and Temari looked up at her expectantly. "Kakashi's back and he brought Naruto and Sasuke with him."

"He did?" Tsunade looked at her as if she didn't believe her.

"Yes, and aside for severe chakra depletion, they're fine. Oh, and Hyuuga Neji is going to make it too."

"Congratulations, Shikamaru." Tsunade turned to him with pride in her eyes. "You completed your mission without any fatalities. Well done."

Shikamaru looked her in the eye and said, "Thank you, Hokage-sama," before walking down the hall to see his friends and teammates.

"Shizune," Tsunade said to her apprentice. "Prepare hospital rooms for Naruto and Sasuke. I'll be by to make sure there is absolutely nothing wrong with them."

"Hai, Tsunade-sama." Shizune left while Tsunade went to talk to Kakashi.

* * *

Danzou gritted his teeth in frustration. The Sasuke retrieval mission was not supposed to turn out this way! When the Kyuubi's chakra had first been felt, he had hoped that Uzumaki had almost irreparably hurt the Uchiha. It would make a great opportunity for the banishment of Uzumaki. Unfortunately, not only had Uzumaki and the Uchiha come back relatively unharmed, but Kakashi said that Uzumaki had told him that the Uchiha had chosen to come back willingly. If the Uchiha confirmed that this was actually the case, there would be no chance of Uzumaki's banishment ever going through.

"Danzou-sama!" One of his undercover Ne operatives bowed to him. "Here are the reports you requested."

Danzou took the papers and looked through them. They were Tsunade's medical reports on Uzumaki and Uchiha. According to them, both boys were in states of chakra depletion and would stay that way for some time; Uzumaki would be conscious in a matter of hours; Uchiha in a matter of days. Danzou noted that Uzumaki had taken a chidori to the right lung and had somehow survived it; he suspected that the demon was responsible for that. It was also stated that his chakra coils had somehow been burned. The report said that it had probably been caused by an excess of the Kyuubi's chakra. Danzou mentally thanked Tsunade for giving him something to work with. The Uchiha was just a normal case of chakra exhaustion once you got past how long it would take for him to recover from it. _How long it will take him to recover from it..._ "Crane!"

"Hai, Danzou-sama," said the operative as he looked up at his master.

"Make sure that the only guards of the Uchiha's room are from Ne and that one of them is a genjutsu specialist. And tell our memory retriever in T&I to be on alert for me as well as our seal expert. When you go by the hospital, tell Mouse to prepare for a chakra transfer. You may go."

"Hai, Danzou-sama." The operative shunshined away.

Danzou looked at the reports in his hand and grinned. Uzumaki idolized the Sandaime and the Yondaime and believed in their ways. Before, it hadn't been a problem as Uzumaki had been ignored and was a half-rate ninja. Now he was gaining influence and was far too stubborn in his thinking to change. Danzou needed to get Uzumaki out of Konoha. He might not be an active shinobi, but the saying 'deception is the lifeblood of a ninja' still described the way he lived.

* * *

Tsunade sighed. It had been a long day, but the paperwork for it was almost done. She reached for a sake bottle and threw it against the wall when she discovered it was empty. "Shizune, I'm out of sake!"

The door to her office opened, but it was not her apprentice. Instead it was Danzou, Homura, and Koharu. She scowled in annoyance at them and they scowled back at her. "What are you doing here?" she asked them in most politically neutral voice.

"We just thought," began Homura, "that you would like to know the new declaration we agreed upon."

The Godaime narrowed her eyes at this. "Why would you want to let me know what you've passed. Your declarations don't concern me."

Koharu spoke this time. "This one does. Or at least it concerns a certain genin under your control."

"And who would that be?" _Please let it not be Naruto._

"Uzumaki, the nine-tails container." There was a carefully groomed neutrality in Danzou's voice.

_Damn it._ "How does it concern him?" The neutrality was even heavier in Tsunade's voice.

Danzou spoke again. "By unanimous agreement we banished him from Konoha."

"What?" Tsunade banged her fist on her desk, breaking it it two. "Why did you?" _The bastards just had to all agree._

"He was a danger to the people of Konoha." Homura was trying to talk rationally. "In your report, you stated that he had an excess of the nine-tails chakra that burned his coils. We have no idea how that has affected his control and if it compromises his control of the nine-tail's chakra, we definitely don't want him to be near the village."

"Along with that," continued Koharu, "a memory scan was conducted of the Uchiha. In it we saw that he thrust a chidori through Uzumaki in a last ditch effort to save himself from the fox's rampage."

"Well done."Tsunade's voice dripped with sarcasm. _They had to come up with all the evidence they needed. _"You've succeeded in banishing one of the most promising ninjas Konoha has ever produced. What other strings are attached to that order"

"An order to all," Danzou stressed that word as he looked at her pointedly, "Konoha shinobi that they are not to teach him anything. He will be leaving in five days."

"Is that all?" Tsunade's arm was shaking.

"Yes." The three advisers spoke at the same time.

"Well then I suggest you leave and I will inform Naruto in the morning." They all bowed to her and left. Tsunade broke the glass in her window with her fist and sat down in her chair to cry.

* * *

"Good. You're awake." Sasuke woke up to someone saying that only to find that the same person was holding a kunai to his neck. He froze in fear.

"As long as you agree to do what I want you to you don't need to fear me. If you don't agree, then you should. My name is Danzou and I've just finished passing the order for Uzumaki's banishment. I was able to pass it based on your testimony which I falsified. Oh, yes, I know what really happened, but if you were to tell other people it would be a problem for me.

"So, I'll propose a deal. You tell what really happened at the Valley of the End and I cripple your chakra network beyond repair. You will never be a shinobi again and your only value will be in the offspring you'll bear. Or you can tell my version of what happened and continue being a shinobi. It's your choice." With that Danzou stopped talking and waited for an answer.

It did not take long for Sasuke to come up with one. On the one hand, he could take Naruto's revenge away and keep his way of life. On the other, he could let Naruto have his revenge and become nothing more than breeding stock for the village. _As long as I'm a shinobi, I can help Naruto achieve his goal. If I'm not one, I can never help him. I'll do it, even if it kills me to kick him out of his home, I won't let myself be put in a position where I can't help him._ "I'll tell your version," he said to Danzo,u trying to keep the tears at bay.

"Good. I'll come by in the morning to tell you what that is." Danzou pulled the kunai away from Sasuke's throat and left the building.

Once he was sure Danzou was gone, Sasuke burst into tears. _I just as good as killed him. Even though it was for good reasons I completely destroyed his dream. Is it my fate to lose everyone I ever loved and cared about?_ When he wiped his eyes and he noticed blood on his hands. Sasuke looked into the mirror to see where the blood came from and watched in horror as his eyes transformed into the dreaded Mangekyou Sharingan.

* * *

AN: Hopefully this isn't too cliche. I know a lot of people have done this storyline before. The next chapter is where it deviants even more from what generally happens in these stories so hopefully you'll like it better then. Thanks for reading!


	2. Skeletons In Konoha's Closet

AN: Wow! I did not think this story would do this well! Thanks to everybody who reviewed, favorited, and alerted this story. You guys make we want to right more! Thank you!

I didn't change very much except to add some details to the history part. Because the Shinobi Alliance Arc is giving out many historical details, I ended up making a timeline for myself. All I can say is that shinobi politics is complicated.

Now on to the story!

* * *

Chapter 2**  
Skeletons In Konoha's Closet**

Naruto woke up to the glorious smell of miso ramen and frowned in confusion when he saw it. There was never ramen in the hospital. To find it right in front of him instead of the usual hospital food meant that something was wrong. He looked up to find Jiraiya, Tsunade, Kakashi, Shizune and Iruka looking at him. "What's wrong? Why are you all here and why is there ramen in the hospital?"

At that, Tsunade threw herself around him in a hug and started crying. Jiraiya looked at the floor while Kakashi closed his one eye. Both Iruka and Shizune had tears in their eyes.

"Baa- Baa-chan? " Naruto stuttered. Tsunade never acted like this.

"Naruto," she cried on his shoulder, "I'm so sorry. The advisers got the Daimyou to sign an order to have you ba- banished."

Naruto froze. "They- they banished me? Even after I brought Sasuke back? Why?" He looked at the people around him. "Why would they do that?"

"Because they never liked you and were always trying to stop you from being a shinobi." It was Kakashi who answered. "They couldn't stop that from happening so they probably have been looking for an excuse to banish you for awhile. They were finally able to come up with a legitimate reason this time around."

Naruto sighed. "Is the reason why they were able to banish me because I used the fox's powers?"

Tsunade sadly nodded before hugging Naruto again.

He looked up at her again. "Is Sasuke awake yet?"

Tsunade gulped. "No, the soonest he will wake up is tomorrow afternoon. As it is, whatever his testimony is won't change anything now."

Naruto looked at Tsunade with tears in his eyes. "Sasuke's testimony wouldn't be able to change anything?"

Tsunade shook her head. "Not when the Daimyou signed it. I'm so sorry, Naruto." She put his arms around him and began massaging his back.

"When do I have to leave?" Naruto asked her, wanting to get the information over with as soon as possible.

"Five days," Tsunade cried. She put her arms around him and began massaging his back.

Naruto silently cried into her shoulder. _No sooner does someone give me a place to belong here, I loose everything I've worked so hard to gain with no hope of ever being able to get it back. Why can't I be seen as who I am and not for the fox I hold just for once?_ The only thought he had that was able to bring him some degree of comfort, was that Sasuke would never stand for yet another member of his family to be taken from him. At that, he fell into an uneasy sleep.

* * *

Sasuke woke up to find Danzou glaring at him. "Get dressed. Then meet me out in the hall," Danzou ordered as he left the room. Sasuke sighed and wondered yet again what he had go himself into. Having no other options, he got dressed and went out into the hall. Danzou was waiting for him. "Follow me," Danzou said and walked down the hall. Sasuke and four of Danzou's Ne operatives followed him.

The six of them left the hospital and made their way to the Hokage Building. The entire time nobody noticed them. When they got to the Hokage Building, they didn't go through the front entrance. Instead, they went through a side entrance in the back of the building.

From there, they went through many corridors that Sasuke had never seen until they came to an empty hallway. Here they stopped and Danzou cut his finger and wiped the blood across a knothole in the wall. A door opened and he went in, leaving Sasuke alone in the hall. A few minuets later Danzou came out and said to Sasuke, "This is the place where we keep the records of the unofficial missions Konoha carries out and the true history of Konoha. The story you will tell of your fight at the Valley of the End is laid out on the table. Read it and memorize it. You have all the time you need and will be alone; the room is sealed to so that only one person be in it at a time for security reasons. Do you understand?" Sasuke nodded and went in the door which closed and locked itself from the inside behind him.

On the table in front of Sasuke was the 'true' falsified report of the Valley of the End. He read it and almost cried at the wrongness of it. According to it, he and Naruto had battled it out normally until Naruto had run out of chakra. When that happened, he began channeling the Kyuubi's chakra. As time went on, he lost control of the bijuu's chakra and Sasuke was forced to use a chidori on him so that the Kyuubi would not be able to kill him. Once Naruto had been knocked out, Sasuke had brought him back to Konoha. It was as detailed as a real fight would have been. Sasuke gritted his teeth in anger and leaned against one of the filing cabinets that lined the walls to begin memorizing the report.

After a while, he shifted to sitting on the floor. As he did so he saw what was written of the filing cabinet in front of him. There were two dates. The first date was more than a hundred years old. Connected by a line to the first date, was the date of the Uchiha Massacre. Underneath the two dates was a title: The History of the Uchiha Clan. _What secrets are kept in here? _Sasuke thought as he reached over and opened the drawer.

Inside the drawer, there were five main files with the titles Shodai, Nindaime, Sandaime, Yondaime and Sandaime again. Inside of them were many smaller files. The file that grabbed Sasuke's attention the most was the first file in the drawer. It was labeled, Operation: Blind Eye. The date on it was the date of the Uchiha Massacre. _What is this?_ Sasuke felt something lurch in the pit of his stomach. He pulled the file out and gasped at what he saw. It was the mission Itachi had received the night of the massacre.

_Operation: Blind Eye_

_Commissioned By: Sarutobi Hiruzen, Shimura Danzou, Mitokado Homura, Utatne Koharu_

_Agent: 012110 Uchiha Itachi_

_Mission Orders: Complete nullification of the the threat of the Uchiha Clan._

_Mission Report: Entire clan nullified except for one Uchiha Sasuke. _

_Status: Failed_

A chill went through Sasuke when he read it. He quickly looked through the rest of the mission file, his sharingan subconsciously activating. Inside the file were two more pieces of paper. One was a record written by the Sandaime Hokage of Itachi begging him for Sasuke's protection from the advisers after the mission. The other was a record written by Danzou of Itachi threatening him that should he as so much touch Sasuke, Itachi would tell everything he knew about Konoha to its enemies. _What is going on here?_ Sasuke thought. _Itachi was ordered to kill off the clan? Why? _In desperation he read through all five files with sharingan enhanced speed. What he read horrified him.

The files started with the founding of Konoha over a century ago when a clan called Senju and the Uchiha clan made a truce with Hi no Kuni to create Konoha. Throughout the time of the Shodai, the Uchiha clan remained loyal to the village, even going so far as to turn in their leader, Uchiha Madara, who wanted a rebellion. Due to the past tension between the Senju and the Uchiha and the fact that a Senju was made Shodai, many people in Konoha's government distrusted them. When the Nindaime came to power in the middle of the First Secret War, he showed his trust in the Uchiha by forming the Konoha Military Police. _So far nothing's wrong,_ Sasuke thought.

Unfortunately for the Uchiha, once the Nindaime died and the Sandaime was instated, the position was used to distance the Uchiha from the village government and ANBU were ordered to keep the clan under surveillance. Rumors began to circulate that there was an Uchiha rebellion underway. Sasuke wondered how the Sandaime could have let something like that happen. When the Yondaime came to power, it seemed like Uchiha would finally get a break. Under the Yondaime, the ANBU surveillance was called off and any talk of a rebellion stopped. Sasuke's opinion of the Yondaime only grew at this.

It seemed as if everything was going fine until the Kyuubi attack and the Yondaime's death. Instantly the Uchiha were under suspicion. It didn't help that it was a proven fact the sharingan was one of the few methods that could control a bijuu. Because of the attack, it was suspected the Uchiha were plotting a rebellion. The ANBU surveillance was started again, only this time it was worse because it was "recommended" to the clan that they should all live in the same corner of the village for safety reasons. Sasuke gritted his teeth when he saw that the "recommendation" was clearly an order. The Sandaime didn't think such precautions were necessary, but he agreed to them once it was established that the Uchiha, wanting more of the freedom the Yondaime had given them, were indeed launching a coup. A spy was planted in the Uchiha to keep the village informed about the Uchiha's plans. Sasuke's heart clenched when he saw that the orders had been given to Itachi and he remember that his father had asked Itachi to do the exact same thing for the Uchiha against the village. _So who's side was he really on?_

He got his answer when he was he information gleaned from Itachi's spying. Sasuke saw why he had never known anything about the coup. In the first place, he was too young. Secondly, his father had been the leader of the coup. _I couldn't be trusted to keep my mouth shut._ The other thing he noticed was what the Uchiha had wanted to gain from the coup. Initially, they wanted the freedoms they had and were going to have under the Yondaime, but when it became clear the the current government would not listen to them, they decided take out the people they thought were responsible for their situation; the Hokage, his two advisers and Danzou.

The one thing Sasuke didn't get was why Itachi had chosen the village over his clan. While Sasuke understood that his clan might have been going to far in the coup, it wasn't like they didn't have a reason; there were plenty of reports that stated the Uchiha were the only clan in the village that had this kind of treatment by Konoha's government. Sasuke could understand the desire to be treated the same way as everybody else. After all, that desire had shaped Naruto into the person he had become. It wasn't like the Uchiha hadn't looked into alternatives either. In fact, it seemed from the documents they had used the coup as a last resort.

What was clear, was that after the advisers had burned their bridge to the Uchiha, they decided to clean up their own mess in the easiest, if bloodiest, way possible, all without having to take the blame for any of it at the expense of Itachi's life and future. Now his brother's unusual behavior before the massacre made much more sense. _How could he stand to be a double agent between two opposing parties when he held loyalty to both? No wonder his relationship with Tou-san and the clan was strained._

Sasuke looked again at the file on the Uchiha massacre and thought back to his meeting with Itachi in Tanzaku Gai. _I don't know why Itachi let me live when he was ordered to kill every Uchiha, but he didn't try to "correct" the mistake either when we met. If anything, he made sure all of his attacks wouldn't have a chance of killing me. He even made my well-being a security issue as well so that Danzou and the advisers couldn't finish the job. Anaki, you were the perfect shinobi, why did you fail your last mission?_ Sasuke thought about both his recent experience with the Itachi who worked with Akatsuki and the relationship he had with the old Itachi he knew before the Uchiha massacre. _Did you care about me so much you couldn't kill me? _It was the last clear thought he had before he fell prey to the conflicting emotions within him and blacked out.

* * *

_They really need to get better security in here. _Mitarashi Anko thought as she snooped through the unofficial missions and history Konoha was responsible for. _Not that I'd tell anyone. I wouldn't be able to do this if they found out. _Not that the room had bad security, it was one of the best guarded rooms in the village after all, but it you had certain resources available to you and you knew how to use them correctly, getting in was easy. Not that animal summons were easy to come across and summons that were bigger than you were even harder to find. _Probably why there's that loophole anyway. Who in their right minds would walk inside a giant snake and then ask them to reverse summon themselves to a different location and expect to get out of it alive? Oh right, me, the psycho who was trained by the evil genius who betrayed the Leaf even if she can't remember being his student._

Said person was why Anko was in the room in the first place. Most of her own missions were filed there and she was always wanting more time to see if there was any of her and Orochimaru's history filled away in there. Unfortunately, she was never legally allowed time to go through it, that would undermine the purpose of the room altogether. So Anko was reduced to sneaking into the room on what little free time she had.

Today's run had been much more promising than others had been. She had found the report of when Orochimaru had officially been put out of the village and was very surprised to find that the date was after the time she had been abandoned by him. _Well that explains why the Sandime made me an hunter-nin; he didn't want Orochimaru to find out I was still alive__. What in the?_ Anko stiffened in alarm. Coming from somewhere inside the room, a lone chakra signature spiked. It wasn't so much that anyone was in the room that spooked her; that had happened before and she had never been found out. What spooked her was that the chakra signature was tainted with Orochimaru's chakra just like her's was. The only way anyone could get chakra like that was to have one of Orochimaru's curse seals on them and the only other person Anko knew who had one in Konoha was Uchiha Sasuke. _What is he doing in here?_ She quickly made a copy of the report and zeroed in on Sasuke's chakra against her judgment.

What she found shocked her. He was slumped over on the floor, his hand clamped over his curse seal, his unconscious face streaked with tears and full of pain. Next to him, a drawer of a filling cabinet was open and empty. Scattered on the floor around him were different files that looked like they had been hurriedly read through. Anko assumed that the files were from the drawer. Set further away from him was a separate file that definitely didn't go with the rest of them.

She carefully picked her way through the paper on the floor to get to Sasuke and winced at how his chakra was fluctuating. _We're lucky the walls have seals that block out all the chakra coming from this room._ Carefully, she removed his hand from his shoulder and caught a glimpse of his curse seal. Her eyes widened. It was changing. The seal started out looking like her curse seal, three tomoe swirling around each other, with a ring of blood around the tomoe, the seal Kakashi put about it to keep the curse seal in check. Slowly the ends of the tomoe glowed and lengthened until they touched the ring around them. When they did, the ring glowed the same color of the tomoe for an instant, before both seals reverted back to their usual black and Sasuke's chakra stopped fluctuating.

Anko stared in shock at the new seal. It looked like a combination of the curse seal and the sealing seal. She wondered what had caused the two seals to join. She doubted it was Orochimaru. He wasn't anywhere in the vicinity and there was no way he would want a barrier between his "gift" and Sasuke. It was possible it was Sasuke. From what she knew of the seal Kakashi used, it depended on the willpower of whoever was sealed with it. It was possible that Sasuke had completely bent the curse seal to his will. _If he did, that's the first time somebody's ever done that. _If he had , Orochimaru's taint would have been eradicated from his mind. At the same time, it felt as if Sasuke had retained the power the curse seal granted him. _After all, Orochimaru's chakra is definitely still a part of him, but it appears Sasuke's willpower now has dominance over the seal. What caused that to happen?_

Nothing else was wrong was wrong with Sasuke as far as Anko could see, so she turned to the empty drawer. As soon as she saw the title, she understood why he would go through it. The files on the floor obviously came from it, so she started reading through them as well.

By the time she was finished, Anko barely had control over her own curse seal. _How dare they! Instead of fixing a problem of their own making, they take the easy way out, not the best way.__ It's just like..._ Anko got out her copy of the report about Orochimaru's abandonment of Konoha she had found and read through it again. _...this. __Not to mention the advisers have never trusted me either and never give me any normal missions, only suicide missions hoping I'll get killed on one of them. _She covered Sasuke's mouth with her hand and gave him a gentle shake. He woke up immediately.

After the initial panic, he recognized who she was and Anko lowered her hand from his face. "You're that that crazy proctor we had for the second part of the Chuunin Exam, aren't you? What are you doing here?" He said as he looked guiltily at the papers on the floor.

"The same thing you're doing, only I'm doing it without permission." Anko smiled brightly.

Sasuke looked puzzled. "You mean you're not going to tell them I went through all this?"

"Of course not. Why would I tell them that after reading about what they did to your clan? I wouldn't come out of the conversation alive. Not to mention they treat me a lot like the Uchiha clan right after the Nindaime died. They don't trust me at all and have been trying to get me killed by only sending me out on suicide missions. Fortunately, I'm a hunter-nin in ANBU so I can completely ignore them and get away with it."

"Right," said Sasuke, immensely revealed she wasn't going to tell anyone about what he read. "So, what are you doing here? I was told only one person could be in this room at any given moment."

She shrugged. "I have a summon that I can ride in and the seals on the room don't get triggered by summons appearing inside the room. Mostly because most people don't have summons that work like that. Why was I here? I was looking for information on my former Sensei." _Who hurt you too._

"Okay, um, why did you come find me?"

_Did you not feel your chakra change?_ "You chakra was fluctuating everywhere and I knew it was yours; it feels like mine."

Sasuke gave a start. "You knew my curse seal changed? Why?"

Anko scowled. "Because Sensei gave me one exactly like yours and my chakra is tainted with his chakra just like yours is." She pulled her collar down and showed him the Curse Seal of Heaven on her neck. "I meant to talk about it with you after the Chuunin Exams. So, why did it change just now?"

Sasuke's eyes widened when he saw it and he gave her the knowing, relieved look that only people who had gone through the same experience could share before he took a breath and began to talk. "You know how when Orochimaru first bites you, you pass out and see a younger version of yourself, who is really Orochimaru, in your head telling you that if you only had more strength you would have been able to succeed at something you failed at in your past?" He looked questionably at Anko who nodded in understanding. "Well, when Orochimaru bit me, I saw him as my seven-year-old self telling me that if I was stronger I would have been able to prevent the death of my clan. He also told me the only way I would be able to avenge them would be by accepting the power I had been offered by him. I accepted the power with open arms because, at the time, I thought the only way to avenge the clan was to kill Itachi."

"What does that have to do with your curse seal changing?"

"After I finished reading the entire file, I blacked out and found myself in my head with Orochimaru as my seven-year-old self in front of me again. He was saying that I could only get the power he offered if I had the goal of killing Itachi. At that, I got mad that he even suggested I do that. I ended up fighting him to get him out of my head and eventually choked him to death. When I did that, my body absorbed him and I was the only one in my head until you woke me up. What?" he asked when he saw Anko's reaction.

"As far as I know, that type of thing's impossible. By the way, I suggest you take a look at your curse seal." _Not to mention I'm jealous of you. _

Sasuke did and his eyes widened. "I guess Kakashi wasn't kidding when he said the seal kept the curse seal contained and depended on my willpower."

"He definitely wasn't." Anko paused for a moment. "So, what were you doing here? You obviously got in by the real entrance and it probably wasn't to take a look a these files." She gestured at the files all around them.

* * *

"So, what were doing here? You obviously got in by the real entrance and it probably wasn't to take a look at these files."

Sasuke sighed at that question. _I knew this question was coming. _"I was let in here to see and memorize this file." He handed Anko the file he had been reading.

After she read through it, Anko looked up and asked, "So, what really happened?"

Sasuke told her everything that happened at the Valley of the End, but watered what he and Naruto had talked about down to generalities. _There is no way I am betraying his trust in me. Not after what I did to him._ He did tell her that Naruto had showed him a better way to get revenge on Itachi in such a way that he wouldn't have to pursue killing Itachi as his sole goal in life, but would instead benefit him a whole lot more in the process. "...He's the only reason I didn't go to Orochimaru, and now they're throwing him out," he concluded.

Anko nodded. "What are you going to do about it?"

Sasuke looked up at her. "What do you mean?"

"Well," Anko sighed, "from the way you're acting I don't think you're ever going to be comfortable again with taking orders from Konoha. The only problem with that is the only way to not take orders from them is to leave Konoha. You could stop being a shinobi, but that would raise questions you wouldn't want to answer." She smiled at Sasuke.

_Now that you mention it,_ Sasuke thought, _she does have a point. Leaving would be convent. I wouldn't have to live with the fact Naruto's banishment was made on my testimony, I could ask Itachi why he didn't kill me and Danzou couldn't seal my chakra even if wanted to. _Sasuke smirked at the thought.

_Of course, if Danzou did do that, he'd have an international security leak to deal with, courtesy of Itachi. Also, Naruto is now a member of my family and they're making him leave Konoha, Itachi is a nuke-nin and the advisers ordered the massacre of my entire family including me. It seems the advisers __really don't want my family around here. In fact, it seems like the only reason then do want me here is so that they can still say Konoha has the sharingan._

_Since that's the case, I'm not staying here; I'd rather be a nuke-nin and be my own person than be a Konoha-nin and be controlled by people who don't care about me. It'll be a good way to get revenge on the advisers and complete Itachi's last mission. They'll have the satisfaction that the Uchiha will never again try to take Konoha over, but at the cost that another hidden village might get their most precious bloodline. This is going to be fun. Naruto must feel like this when he plans one of his pranks._ That thought caused Sasuke to laugh.

He turned to Anko, "What were you saying about leaving Konoha?"

Anko had a grin on her face that reminded Sasuke so much of Orochimaru, he shivered. "Nothing," she said. "It's just that I'm leaving even if you aren't. The advisers don't like me very much and if they found out I knew about this, they'd kill me without a thought. Fortunately, I'm a hunter-nin so I know exactly how they search for nuke-nin. I'm thinking we could team up because without me, you probably wouldn't make it one day out of Konoha without getting caught. With me, you'll at least survive long enough to learn how to keep them off your trail without my help."

Sasuke thought about that. _The experience of a hunter-nin would be invaluable. _"That's not a bad idea," he said. "You wouldn't happen to know a way to get all these files out of here so I can take them with me when we leave." _They're the only proof I have Konoha actually called for the Uchiha massacre._

"I've got better," said Anko as she took a scroll out of her pocket and unsealed a bunch of blank paper from it. "I know a jutsu that'll make a perfect copy of the documents. That way we can leave a full drawer with all the files in it. Just not the original files." She got work copying the files.

Sasuke had an evil grin on his face. "If that's true, I'm going to leave a message in there that the originals are with me and the reason I abandoned Konoha is because they didn't deserve my loyalty after they gave the orders for my family to be killed, blamed my nee-san for their own crime, and banished my adoptive brother, Naruto."

Anko looked up startled. "Naruto's your brother?"

Sasuke nodded. "After he showed me a better way to get revenge at the Valley of the End, I realized how alike we truly were and did a jutsu that made him my brother in blood. He'll eventually get the sharingan and now has an affinity for katon jutsu along with whatever affinity he had before. It's a genetic change to, so he'll pass it on to whatever kids he'll have."

Anko whistled. "Whatever you do, don't let advisers know a jutsu like that exists, or Orochimaru for that matter. They'll force you to do it on everyone who they think deserves it."

Sasuke laughed. "Don't worry. They'll never find out. I'm clearing out the Uchiha district of anything useful and sealing it up so no one can get in unless you have Uchiha blood."

Anko nodded and looked up at him from the floor." Okay, I'm done. What's next?"

"We put everything back and add my note to them." Anko started putting the files back in order, while Sasuke wrote his note out. He added it to the file that contained Itachi's last mission orders before closing the drawer with a satisfying click. Sasuke turned back to Anko. "Can you seal all the files into a scroll and leave the scroll at the Uchiha district?"

"Sure. Where do you want me to hide it?" Anko sealed all the original files in a scroll.

Sasuke didn't even have to think. "In the main temple of the Nakano shrine, on the far right side, under the seventh tatami mat, is my clan's secret meeting place. Just add it to the pile of scrolls stored there."

Anko nodded before carefully asking, "Are you going to tell anyone else about this?"

_Am I going to tell anyone else about this?_ Sasuke hadn't really thought about it, but... _...she did say she would go with me when I said I was going to Orochimaru. She didn't betray me then, she won't betray me now. Besides, it wouldn't be fair for her to remain here alone without her teammates, when me and Naruto are going to be together... Yeah, Sakura's definitely coming. Kakashi-sensei... he'd be sympathetic towards me because of the sharingan he has... I never learned how he got that... I feel like I need to learn that before I go... One more thing on my to-do list... but he's also completely loyal to Konoha; he might turn me in for all he talks about teamwork. Maybe, but only if I'm completely sure he won't betray me. I'm definitely discussing it with Anko before I tell him._ "Definitely Sakura, me and Naruto's other teammate; maybe Kakashi, our jounin sensei."

"Are you sure they can be trusted? I don't know Sakura, but I know for a fact Kakashi would have a hard time abandoning the village he's sacrificed so much for." Anko bit her lip.

"Sakura won't tell; she even offered to go with me to Orochimaru." Anko's eyes widened at that. "Kakashi, I don't know yet. I need to talk with you in a more convenient setting before I decide. We should get out of here."

"Yeah, I guess I'll meet you and Sakura at the Uchiha mansion the night you get released from the hospital." Sasuke nodded in agreement. "In the meantime, I'll be getting ready to go rouge."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you mean?"

Anko laughed. "I've got access to all kinds of stuff you can't imagine because I'm a hunter-nin. If I'm going rouge, I might as well go all out and take as much as I can with me."

Sasuke laughed with her. "I'll see you later then?"

"Definitely." Anko bit her thumb, swiped it across a tattoo on her left forearm that Sasuke recognized as the same summoning tattoo Orochimaru had, and left a trail of blood across it before snapping her bloody fingers. "Kuchiyose no jutsu," she said and a giant blue snake slid out of an aisle. It was so big that when it opened its mouth, Anko walked right in. The snake closed its mouth and slid back into the aisle.

When Sasuke looked down the aisle, it was empty. _So that was what she meant when she said the room wasn't sealed against summons because not very many people had access to a summons they could fit into. She wasn't kidding about Orochimaru being her sensei either; the only person she could get the summon from is him. What else did she learn from him..._ Now the only thing left to do, was to get out of the hospital without alerting Danzou he knew something he definitely wasn't supposed to.

Sasuke picked up the much offending report he was supposed to have memorized and placed it back on the table in front of the door. He turned back to the place the Uchiha file was and noted with relief, that it looked exactly the same as when he first got there. He gave a quick nod of thanks to it before he opened the door and stepped out of the room and into the hall.

"You finished?" Danzou asked.

Sasuke nodded. It was taking all of his concentration not to show the man in front of him any outward sign that he knew exactly what he had contributed to his clan's massacre. Fortunately, he was escorted back to the hospital without any further questioning.

Once he got back to his room, Danzou ordered him to never tell anyone what had happened and told Sasuke that if he did as he was told, he would probably never have to see Danzou again. Once he left, Sasuke sighed with relief that he hadn't been found out and went back to sleep.

* * *

"Where is he?" the man asked, his voice dangerously soft. "Where is Sasuke-kun?"

"He's not here," the young man answered, his voice betrayed the fear he felt. "In fact, I've heard he will never come here willingly again."

"What?" There was a heavy, displeased silence.

"It's said he was coming here until he met up with Uzumaki who somehow convinced him to return to Konoha."

"I see." There was silence. "In that case, prepare a body for me. We can do nothing until I get my ability to do jutsu back."

* * *

AN: I got the impression that Danzou underestimates anyone who follows the Sandaime's way of thinking or who don't kill their emotions and that he's used to working with Ne shinobi who won't disobey him.

About the record room. The room is designed so that the only enterence is the door. The room "knows" when a person is inside of it and won't let anyone else in until that person leaves. Obviously, whoever designed the seals that keep people from getting in by other means left a loophole, either by accedent or on purpose. A lot more will be said on this when sealing is introduced.

There is probably three more chapters untill we leave Konoha.

Thanks for reading!


	3. Calm Before The Storm

A/N: Sorry this is so late! Lets just say life has been really busy and I have a hard time writing fillerish chapters. But, it's done now.

I changed Jiraiya's conversation with Naruto a bit and the sharingan's abilities aren't as rigid.

Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 3**  
Calm Before The Storm**

Kakashi walked down the hallway with Tsunade towards Naruto's room. Tsunade was releasing Naruto from the hospital today and he wanted, no, needed to be there for him. When the two of them went into the room, Kakashi's heart clenched when he saw Naruto. The boy was sitting in bed. He appeared to be frozen. His face was blank. Kakashi knew that look. It was the way he had felt after his father had committed suicide.

Naruto barely lifted his head as the two of them walked in. "What are you guys doing here?" he asked in a low voice.

"Getting you out of the hospital," Tsunade said as she checked his charts. "You're in perfect health and there's no reason to keep you here anymore, especially as you days in the village are numbered." Naruto didn't show he had even heard her.

When she was done checking his charts, Kakashi turned to Naruto. "Do you want to get ramen with me?"

Naruto finally moved. He looked up at Kakashi and sliver of pleading thankfulness showed though. "Yeah. I'd like that." It was slight, but he sounded more like himself.

"Let's go then."

* * *

"Are you sure we going to Ichiraku's?" By now, Naruto was more like his old self. Kakashi was going to Ichiraku's by a very strange route. Instead of going though the village, he skirted around the village though a bunch of training grounds that had a lot of trees in them.

"We'll end up there, but I have to show you something else before we get there." Kakashi answered as he stopped in a training ground. He motioned for Naruto to take a seat on the ground and proceeded to sit down in front him. "Naruto," he sighed, "I brought you here train you."

"You... you did?" Naruto looked both confused and pleased at the same time. "But, why?"

"Because," Kakashi looked livid. "The council made an order that once you are out of Konoha, you can not be taught anyone from Konoha. The only reason why they would put something like that as one of the conditions for your exile is because there are plenty of people in Konoha, like Jiraiya, who would get extended missions in order to contact you and train you."

"They would?" Naruto hugged his knees and supported his forehead on them. Silent tears made their way down his cheek.

"Yes." Kakashi's voice became more direct. "Naruto, look at me." Naruto did so. "I'm going to teach you several different jutsu right now. This training is going to be different than any other I've given you. The main reason is because up till now, all the training I've given Team 7 is combat training. This will be survival training and all the jutsu I will teach you are generally not used for combat. Do you understand." He looked Naruto in the eye.

Naruto looked back at him and said, "Yeah, when can we go to Ichiraku's"

Kakashi's eye turned into an upside-down 'u'. "We will go to Ichiraku's when you have memorized all the jutsu and can do them perfectly in you sleep."

Naruto looked shocked. "How can we do that before I leave?"

"We're going to do that by having you copy the handseals I do. You can't learn them off scrolls because most of these jutsu are not from Konoha; I copied them off foreign ninja with my sharingan. Do you get it?"

Naruto nodded vigorously. "Yeah, it's like how I learned the Rasengan."

"Alright, then," said Kakashi as he and Naruto stood up. "The first jutsu I'm going to teach you I copied off a Kiri-nin. It lets you get clean water anywhere, even in a desert. Now watch carefully, the handseals are..."

* * *

"Ah, that hits the spot," Naruto said as he finished his eighteenth bowl of ramen. "Thanks, Kakashi-sensei."

"Any time," the silver haired jonin said.

"Uh, Kakashi-sensei, I was just wondering something?" Naruto started.

"Yeah," Kakashi said as he looked up from his orange book.

"I can get why you had to train Sasuke for the chuunin exams seeing as he was facing Gaara, but I was thinking back to my training and I think something else was going on because Ebisu never tried to train me again after he got knocked out by Ero-sennin. Do you think that's unusual?"

Kakashi smiled to himself. _He's finally seeing underneath the underneath._ "Naruto, it's not unusual seeing as when he apologized to me that he let Jiraiya take over your training, I told him he shouldn't worry about it. He didn't stay long enough for me to tell him I already knew Jiraiya was back in town when I told him to train you," Kakashi offhandedly added.

Naruto gaped at him and a smile formed on his face. "You knew..."

Kakashi nodded. "I couldn't tell you to go meet Jiraiya because you didn't know who he was, so I arranged for you to be trained with someone who would bring you to the place you could easily bump into him."

"Thanks, Kakashi-sensei." Naruto pulled him into a hug which Kakashi returned. "I've got to go pack, see you later."

Kakashi smiled as Naruto left the ramen stand and walked towards his apartment. Tenchi handed him the large bill. Kakashi sighed as he saw it, but it wasn't because paying the bill would clean out his wallet. It was because he never would buy ramen for Naruto again.

After paying the bill, Kakashi left Ichiraku's. He felt someone watching him from the ally next to the ramen stand and silently shunshined behind them and held a kunai to their throat. The person gasped in surprise and Kakashi was shocked to see he was holding a kunai to Sasuke's neck. "What are doing here?" Kakashi asked as he removed the kunai.

At the sound of his voice, Sasuke relaxed. "Looking for you," he replied. He turned to look at Kakashi. "Is there anywhere we can talk without anyone overhearing us?"

Kakashi was alarmed when heard the slight panic in Sasuke's voice. In all of his experience with Sasuke, he had never heard him sound like that. He wrapped his arms around Sasuke and shunshined to his apartment's roof.

* * *

Kakashi led Sasuke through a window into his apartment and motioned for him to keep quiet. Sasuke nodded and watched him as he went up to the door. Kakashi formed several handseals which caused a seal to appear on the door frame. He used his blood to mark several seals around it before he channeled his chakra into the now complete seal. Kakashi led Sasuke over to the couch. Once they were seated, all the tension drained out of Sasuke. Kakashi turned to him. "Sasuke, what's wrong?"

Sasuke turned to him and panic he'd been barely suppressing in the ally showed plainly on his face. "Danzou," he whispered. The boy wrapped his arms around Kakashi and held onto him like Kakashi was his lifeline.

Kakashi's eyes widened. Danzou was someone no genin should know about. "What did he do to you?" He put his arms around Sasuke, giving him the comfort he needed.

Sasuke gulped before answering him. "He told me I had to lie about what happened between me and Naruto at the Valley of the End or else he would permanently cripple my chakra network."

Kakashi froze. He could see exactly what Danzou was doing. Danzou needed Sasuke to provide a reason for Naruto's exile, but Sasuke wouldn't do it unless he had a motivation to help Danzou. It would be more like Danzou to threaten Sasuke with death, but Sasuke was the only person who could pass on the sharingan; he couldn't afford to kill him. Instead, Danzou had insured Sasuke's cooperation by threatening Sasuke with the loss of nearly everything that defined who he was. "Did you go along with it?" he asked, hoping his student had.

Sasuke nodded and Kakashi released the breath he'd been holding. He released Sasuke and looked him in the eye. "Sasuke, listen to me. I'm very glad you went along with Danzou's plan. I know you hate yourself for indirectly being the cause of Naruto's exile, but if you hadn't done what Danzou told you to do, he would have crippled your chakra network. Danzou is one of the most powerful people in Konoha and he does not agree with the Sandaime's or the Yondaime's policy's. He's— Sasuke, what's wrong?" Sasuke was breathing quickly, almost to the point of hyperventilation.

"He hates Naruto because he idolizes the Sandaime and Yondaime. How could I've not seen that before?" Sasuke buried his face in his hands. "The fact that Naruto has the Kyuubi in him doesn't help either."

Kakashi's breath caught in his throat. _How could he have known about that? No one is supposed to talk about it._ A darker thought came up. _What does he think of Naruto?_ "Who told you that?" Kakashi's tone was accusatory as he rounded on the genin.

Sasuke raised his head and looked Kakashi directly in the eye. "Naruto."

Kakashi looked away from Sasuke. Since Naruto had told Sasuke he contained the Kyuubi, there was nothing he could do about it. _Why would Naruto tell Sasuke that?_ He turned back to Sasuke. "When was this?"

"At the Valley of the End." Kakashi could tell Sasuke was being honest.

"I'm assuming that was part of what Danzou didn't want you tell."

"Yeah, it was."

Kakashi looked at his student and decided to take a gamble. "Would you be willing to tell me what actually happened at the Valley of the End between you and Naruto?"

Sasuke bit his lip. Kakashi had never seen him this venerable before. "Can anyone hear us?"

Kakashi shook his head. "One of the advantages of having a seal master as your team leader is you pick up a lot about sealing. There's no way anyone could hear us."

"I'll tell you what happened then," Sasuke started, "but hear me out before you make any judgments; there's a lot of stuff that happened and you're not going to like it."

* * *

Kakashi looked at his student. The boy had finished telling about the Valley of the End with him blacking out from giving Naruto the sharingan. Now Sasuke was looking guiltily at Kakashi, preparing himself for Kakashi's response.

"Sasuke," Kakashi began, "you have no idea how disappointed I am in you that you would use the jutsu I taught you to protect your teammates to try to kill one of them. At the same time, I'm proud you were able to see past all the prejudice that surrounds Naruto. Unfortunately, Danzou has undone all the good that came out of you and Naruto's confrontation." He paused a moment to further think of what else he should tell his tell Sasuke. "At this point, you should go along with what Danzou is telling you to do. After Naruto is gone and this whole thing blows over, we can tell the Hokage. When we do, you're probably going to have to leave Konoha for your own protection until she sorts it out. That's the best we can do right now with the threat of your chakra being crippled. Are you okay with that?"

Sasuke nodded and Kakashi was pleased to see he had finally relaxed. Keeping secrets was never easy, even more so when the consequences of telling the secret were so severe. Kakashi knew Sasuke would be fine now that someone he trusted also knew the secret. "Is there anything else you want to tell me?"

Sasuke shook his head. He now seemed nervous. "No, but I did want to ask you something. How did you get your sharingan?"

At this, Kakashi bowed his head and closed his eye. Ever since the mission to Nami no Kuni, when his team had first found out he'd had the sharingan, he'd been preparing for this. He was ready. He looked at Sasuke. "During the Third Secret World War, I led a team consisting of me and my two teammates on a mission. During the mission, one of my teammates, Rin, was captured. Back then, I was very different then I am now. At the time, my only thought was to complete the mission, regardless of the cost. My other teammate, Uchiha Obito..." Kakashi's breath caught in his throat. "...he disagreed with me. He said we should go after her. I pulled rank on him as the jounin in charge and told him to go with me to the mission objective. He refused and went off to rescue Rin on his own. Before he left, he told me this, 'Those who break the rules of the ninja world are scum, but those who don't care about their comrades are worse then scum.'" He looked over at Sasuke and saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. "I stubbornly went the opposite direction of him towards our objective, but I couldn't get his words out of my head. I went back to help him. Before we got to where Rin was held, we were engaged by an Iwa-nin and ended up killing him. In the fight, Obito activated his sharingan and my left eye was sliced out." Kakashi raised his hitai-ite and traced the scar that ran down his closed eye. "When we got to the place where Rin was held, we rescued her and fought another Iwa-nin. Obito pushed me out of the way of rocks aimed at me and ended up getting his entire right side crushed."

Kakashi looked out the window, away from Sasuke. "When I had been promoted to jounin, Sensei and Rin had given me presents. Obito didn't. I said that was fine because I didn't want to carry around any useless baggage. After he had gotten crushed by the rock, he said he'd been thinking what a good present for me would be, one that wouldn't be useless baggage. He said it was his sharingan. When I objected, he said he knew he was dying and wanted to become my eye and see the future for me. Rin was a medic, so she transplanted his eye into me right then and there. The last thing he asked me to do was to protect Rin. We fought our way out of there and with Obito's sharingan I finally completed the chidori. Our sensei finally met up with us and got us out of there. Two years later, during the Kyuubi attack, Rin died and I finally evolved the sharingan to three tomoe." Kakashi looked back to Sasuke. "That's how I got it."

Sasuke nodded his thanks and asked Kakashi another question. "What did the clan do when they found out you had a sharingan?"

"Nothing. Fugaku said that since it was given to me, it wouldn't be right for it to be taken from me." _If __the Uchiha really wanted to take it from me, they could have; they were more experienced then me and __could have easily overpowered me._

"Yeah," Sasuke agreed, "it would be wrong." He looked up at Kakashi. "Thanks for talking some sense into me that night. If you hadn't, I probably wouldn't be here. And thanks for listening to me and for all the advice and for telling me how you got the sharingan."

Kakashi nodded. "Anytime. Now let me get you out of here before Danzou suspects anything." Sasuke nodded in agreement. Kakashi reached over to his student and shunshined both of them out of his apartment.

* * *

That night, Sasuke thought back on what he had learned from and about his sensei. He knew Kakashi would hate him for using Chidori on Naruto, but he hadn't thought it would be because of how Kakashi had developed it. _He only perfected it once Obito gave him his sharingan and he made it to protect his teammates. When I used it on Naruto I threw away everything Kakashi taught me. I don't know how he could even look at me. _Then Sasuke thought about Kakashi's teammate. _He said his best friend was an Uchiha and that he taught him what he lives by today. Not only was I spitting on what Kakashi told me, I was also spitting on the ideas of one of my own family. He and Rin must have been the ones Kakashi was taking about when he said everyone he loved had already been killed. No wonder he said he knew what I was going through._

Sasuke finally thought about the one thing he'd been thinking about all night. _The real question is, should I tell him I'm leaving Konoha with Naruto. If I told him I was leaving because of what the village did to my clan, he'd probably understand why. He would see it as the village turning on an ally. He might still try to stop me from leaving though, or he might tell the Hokage which would lead to an even bigger problem. I just don't know him well enough to know what he might do. It would be easier to not tell him anything. But, he deserves to know why his best friend's clan was killed off and why his other student left. Anko said he was very loyal to Konoha so he might stop me just because I'm leaving. Unless Anko says otherwise, I'm not going to tell him. It just complicates things more then they already are._

That decided, Sasuke turned to the big question he'd been having ever since the hospital. He got up from his bed and went into the bathroom. After switching the light on, he looked at himself in the mirror. Sasuke sent chakra to his eyes and saw what he'd both hoped and feared appear in his eyes: the Mangekyou Sharingan. _I was hoping I was just seeing things in the hospital. It seems I wasn't._

Sasuke got closer to the mirror to further examine his eyes. He'd never seen any sharingan like them before. _Why would my Mangekyou look so much different than my brother's? _Sasuke wondered. Itachi's Mangekyou Sharingan almost looked like a normal sharingan except that all three tomoe were connected to look like a black, three bladed shuriken with a red hole in the middle. Instead of having the traditional three black points on a red iris, Sasuke's Mangekyou Sharingan consisted of three overlapping red ellipses with pointed ends on a black iris, giving his Mangekyou a total of six points.

Sasuke also wondered how he had even gotten the Mangekyou. Itachi had said he need to kill his best friend to get them _so how did I get them without killing Naruto?_ Sasuke had no answers, so he went to the one place that was sure to have them: the Nakano shrine.

* * *

Naruto sighed in exhaustion as he entered his apartment. It had been a very tiring day for him. Not since the time he had learned the Rasengan had he trained so hard nor had he been so pleased with the results.

Kakashi hadn't taken him out for ramen until Naruto had mastered all the jutsu he wanted to teach him. Naruto had learned that Kakashi's idea of mastering a jutsu were very different than his own. Kakashi considered a jutsu mastered when you could do the jutsu with just the handseals with your eyes closed. You did not say the name of the jutsu before you did it and you did not look at your hands to make sure you were getting the seals right. His reason for it was that you didn't want an enemy to know what to expect and you also didn't want to mess up on the handseals especially when there was no written record of them. Kakashi told Naruto most good ninja did jutsu like this and the reason why Team 7 didn't was because they were still genin. Since Naruto was leaving the village, he needed to know what the standard was so that he could bring the rest of his skills up to par. By the time Naruto was done with Kakashi, he was able to draw water out of the air, dig shelters out of the side of a cliff, and do the basic shunshin. He had been surprised how easily he had learned them all until Kakashi informed him the Rasengan was based solely on chakra manipulation. By successfully learning it, Naruto had the best chakra control out of his age group when he actually concentrated.

He had also learned what his elemental affinity was, or rather, what his affinities were. Kakashi had given him a piece of paper that he said was a chakra indicator. When Naruto channeled his chakra into the paper, it both split in two and burned to ash at the same time. Kakashi had been pleasantly surprised and told Naruto he had two elemental affinities, wind and fire. He also explained how rare it was to naturally have two affinities and that it would be easier for Naruto to learn futon and katon jutsu.

_Yep,_ Naruto reflected, _it was a fulfilling day._ He was pulled out of his musings when he heard a knock at the door. He opened it and was pleasantly surprised to find Jiraiya standing there. "Ero-sennin, hi." He scratched the back of his head. "What are you doing here?"

Jiraiya laughed. "Do I need a reason to see my apprentice?"

"No," Naruto smiled. "I suppose you want to come in."

"Yeah, kid." Jiraiya followed Naruto into his apartment. The two of them picked there way around the clutter of scrolls and equipment in the living room until they got to the kitchen. They ended up sitting at Naruto's kitchen table.

"So, what are you here for?" Naruto asked Jiraiya.

"To tell you what's really going going to happen to you," Jiraiya said.

"What do you mean?" Naruto asked.

Jiraiya laughed. "The council thinks that they're getting rid of you, but they're not."

"They're not!" Naruto grinned.

"Ever since Akatsuki showed up, I've been talking with Tsunade about taking you on a training trip when I finish up a mission in three months," Jiraiya began. "So we decided that you would leave three months early and then wait for me. Meanwhile, Tsunade will be straightening the situation out."

Naruto looked up at Jiraiya. "Great, Ero-sennin."

Jiraiya looked annoyed at the name, but didn't say anything about it. "Yeah, kid. No problem. Now there's some more things you should know about the situation..."

* * *

The Nakano shrine was dark when Sasuke entered. He felt his way along the wall towards the shelves where the scrolls were held and froze when he felt the edge of a kunai press against his neck. A hand pulled him against a piece of ANBU armor. He hadn't sensed a thing.

"Remember me?" a woman's voice hissed in his ear.

"Anko?" he whispered.

"Yep. Now go close the trapdoor that leads to here. It's very sloppy." The kunai was momentary pressed harder into his neck before it was removed and a hand pushed Sasuke forward.

Sasuke went and closed the trapdoor. He wondered how the brash Anko could be this stealthy. When he returned to the main room, the torches were lit and there was no one in the room. "Anko?" he asked. Without warning, he was pulled against the ANBU armor again and the kunai was at his throat.

"Yes?" Anko hissed.

"Co- could you please stop scarring me like that?"

There was a laugh and Anko appeared seemingly from nowhere in front of him. "I'll try. Just keep in mind I'm paid to be scary; it's kind of hard for me to stop."

"Um," Sasuke didn't really know how to respond to that. "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you to get here so I could talk to you."

"About what?"

Anko grinned. "Why, getting out of here alive of course."

"Oh." Sasuke blinked. He hadn't been expecting that and slid down to the floor. He leaned against a wall. Anko followed suite. "I- I guess you would know how to do that better then I would.

"Yep, that I would." Anko laughed dryly. "I guess they were right to worry I would follow Sensei's example."

Sasuke had a sad smile on his face at that. He knew who she was talking about. "Yeah, I guess I can stick myself into that same category."

Anko shook her head at this. "You're not, believe me, you're not."

"I'm not?" Sasuke looked up at her in puzzlement.

"If you were the same as me, they wouldn't have sent out a freshly minted chuunin and four genin. If you were the same as me, they'd send out at least an ANBU squad after you along with several hunter-nin."

"What?" _She's saying that's what they should have done?_ Sasuke knew he would be in trouble for leaving the village, but he didn't think he would be in that much trouble.

The purple-haired ANBU let out a humorless laugh. "Yeah, I know. It sounds like overkill doesn't it, but they have a perfectly good reason for it." She gave him a sly look, "I suppose you want to know why they were so lenient to you."

"I can already guess why," said Sasuke bitterly. It was part of the reason he had made Naruto an Uchiha after all. "I'm the last Uchiha left in Konoha and they didn't want to take any chances I would turn on them." He scoffed, "either that or they thought I was so blindly loyal to Konoha there was no chance I would turn on them. The idiots," he concluded.

"Yep, it's a combination of the two actually, but that's close enough and now you know what type of people will be sent after us when we leave," she said brightly. "Fortunately for us, that won't be a problem."

"Because you're a hunter-nin?"

"Yep! Now," Anko turned to Sasuke, "you said you had a way to seal the compound so anyone who isn't an Uchiha could get in. How does that work?"

"Oh that, here's the scroll with the jutsu in it." Sasuke unrolled a scroll and gave it to her.

Anko took the scroll and looked it over. She laughed. "Well, this is definitely a joke on the council. It'll work perfectly; we're definitely using it. Now that that's taken care of—"

"Wait, why are you so sure it will work."

"Because it says here Namikaze Minato designed it and he's the greatest seal master that ever lived."

"The guy who became the Yondaime Hokage and sealed the Kyuubi?"

"Yep, same guy. So, now that we know nobody will be desecrating your land, we need to figure out how to take all your clan's equipment with us."

"Why would we want to do that?"

Anko became serious. "There's several differences between being a shinobi that belongs to a ninja village and a nuke-nin. One the least thought about is equipment. When a shinobi belongs to village they have unlimited access to all the basic shinobi equipment. Nuke-nin don't have that luxury. Instead, they have to make do with what they can steal from other shinobi. There's a lot of equipment in this compound and there's no reason to waste it. Not to mention all the clan's scrolls we need to take with us." Anko leaned against the wall. "When we meet with Naruto and what-was-her-name, your other team mate tomorrow I'll have to bring a bunch of blank scrolls with me."

Sasuke nodded. "Just to let you know, my other team mate is named Sakura."

"I can't guarantee I'll remember it, but I'll try. Are you going to tell Kakashi?" Anko looked concerned.

"No, I talked with him and told him what happened with Danzou, but I didn't tell him I was leaving. He deserves to know, but I don't know him well enough to know what he'll do."

"Good, that's what I'd have told you to do." Anko stood up and dusted herself off. "I've gotta go. I'll come back here tomorrow after sunset to meet up with your team." Sasuke nodded his approval and Anko sank into the ground without a sound.

Once she was gone, Sasuke looked through the scrolls to find information about the Mangekyou Sharingan. There was not very much information on it as the only people who had the Mangekyou were Uchiha Madara and Uchiha Izuna.

A scroll written by Madara Uchiha was sitting near the top. Sasuke didn't even look at it because he had already read it back when Itachi had slaughtered the clan. In it was the barest information on how to get the Mangekyou.

He sifted through the scrolls and found nothing until he found a very old and dusty scroll near the bottom of the pile. It looked as though it hadn't been opened in a very long time. When he rolled it open to see what was in it, he was surprised to find it had been written by Uchiha Izuna. It contained not just the way Madara had gotten the Mangekyou, but also the way Izuna had gotten it.

Sasuke found it interesting that, unlike Madara, Izuna didn't directly kill his closest friend. Instead, he had indirectly been the cause of his cause of his closest friend's death. According to Izuna, the Mangekyou Sharingan hadn't manifest when his friend died. Instead, it manifested when he came to the realization that he was the cause of his friend's death even if he himself hadn't killed him by his own hand. Because of this, Izuna postulated it wasn't the actual deed of killing you closest friend, but the emotions behind it that lead to the activation of the Mangekyou.

Another thing he noted was that his blindness progressed much slower than that of his brother's and thought that was due to the fact that he hadn't actually killed his friend while his brother had. Sasuke didn't know what blindness he was referring to, but he understood that for some reason both Madara and Izuna went blind due to the Mangekyou.

Izuna's conclusion was that it might be possible to gain a blindless Mangekyou Sharingan if an Uchiha went through the emotions of killing their closest friend without having the friend die because of their actions. He did note it was all speculation as those conditions were almost impossible to achieve. To Sasuke, it did explain why he had the Mangekyou Sharingan; he did indeed feel like he had killed Naruto. _I also hope I won't go blind. Aniki,_ Sasuke thought in horror, _You killed Shisui to get your Mangekyou. That means you'll also go blind. Did you know that would happen when you killed him?_

Knowing he couldn't do anything about his brother, Sasuke rolled up the scroll and placed it back at the bottom of the pile. He looked at the tablet that was in the middle of the room and smiled. When he had come down here after the slaughter, he refused to call it a massacre, he had read how the control the bijuu as if they were nothing more than pets. On a whim, he activated his sharingan and gasped when the kanji on the tablet changed. It now contained the information on how to get the Mangekyou Sharingan, but it also contained a warning that whoever got the Mangekyou through the shedding of blood would eventually go blind.

Sasuke sighed and deactivated his sharingan. If there was anything else on the tablet, he would read it later as he was taking the tablet with him. Exhausted from the day's events, Sasuke went back to the house.

* * *

AN: The whole thing with the origin of Izuna's Mangekyou Sharingan came from the realization that if you do need to kill your best friend to get the Mangekyou, Kakashi shouldn't have a Mangekyou as he didn't kill Obito. He does have one though, and when Kakashi fights Itachi for the first time, he knows that Itachi is going blind becasue of the Mangekyou. As the manga doesn't say specify how Izuna and Madara got their Mangekyou, I figured I could play with it a bit.

Thanks for reading!


	4. The Gang Assembles

AN: Yes, this is the real Chapter 4. Sorry, sorry, sorry this took so long. My muse got kidnapped by the FFVII characters, but she is back now and healthy and ready for more chapters. I've done some minor editing on the previous chapters in light of new information presented in the manga, so you might want to go back and read the previous chapters. Also a big thanks to MrNeedsToRemoveAllFavs for putting up all that info on his profile. It corrected some plot issues and gave me more ideas (sealing!).

Thank you all who reviewed and kept me on you fav/alert list. This chapter is for you. Enjoy!

* * *

Chapter 4**  
The Gang Assembles**

Naruto woke up the next morning and looked at the To-Do List he had made last night with Jiraiya. Today he had to stop by the weapon shop for extra kunai and shuriken as well as get more scrolls, but before that... _Ramen! And now it won't take me fifteen minutes to get there._ With a grin Naruto quickly got dressed and ran out the window and onto the roof. He shunshined to Ichiraku Ramen. Unfortunately, it was closed. _Huh?_ This had never happened before. Naruto checked his watch. _Oh._ It was 6:47 AM and Ichiraku's didn't open until 7:00 AM. Without skipping a beat, Naruto shunshined to the roof of the nearest house and began thinking up pranks he could pull now that he knew about sealing and how to shunshin. He looked Sarutobi's head on the Hokage Monument and laughed. _Jiji, you are so lucky I promised you I wouldn't pull any more pranks once I became a ninja, otherwise... _Naruto sniffed. _Ramen!_ Ichiraku's was open. Naruto quickly scrambled down to Ichiraku's and took a seat. "I want the usual!" he told Ichiraku. Ichiraku laughed and handed Naruto the first of several ramen bowls.

Just as Naruto was finishing up his third bowl, Sasuke walked up to Ichiraku's and sat down several places away from Naruto. "Sasuke?" Naruto asked.

Sasuke completely ignored Naruto and studied the menu for a moment before telling Tuchi, " I'd like to have some miso ramen with extra tomatoes if that's possible." Tuchi nodded and handed Sasuke the bowl.

"Sauske?" Naruto asked again, this time a little louder.

Sasuke gave Naruto a look that told Naruto "don't talk to me" before wiping his mouth with a napkin. After he muttered, "Thank you," to Tuchi, he walked off down the street.

Naruto shrugged and gave his bowl back to Tuchi for fourths. As he did so, he noticed there was a piece of paper in the napkin holder that hadn't been there before. Curious, Naruto pulled the paper out and grinned when he saw it was a note from Sasuke.

_Naruto,_

_Meet me at the entrance to the Uchiha District and 1800 hours and bring Sakura, but don't tell anyone else. I need to talk to you guys._

Naruto frowned and stuck the note in is pocket. Something odd was going on with Sasuke, but it sounded like he would be getting answers later. Right now though, he had to finish his ramen and stop by a weapon shop. After that, he would find Sakura.

* * *

As he was walking out of the weapons shop, Naruto saw Sakura come out of a book store with her arms full of books. "Sakura!" he called. _Yes, now I don't have to find her._

Sakura turned to face him at his voice. "Naruto?..." she made out.

Naruto grinned and ran over to her. "Sakura, what are you doing here?"

Sakura bit her lip. "Buying books, but that's not important right now?" She looked around her. "I need to talk to you," she whispered, "but it can't be here."

Naruto stared at her. _Okay?_

Sakura sighed. "Kakashi told me about what happened. I need to talk to you, but it can't be here in the middle of the village." She dropped her books into Naruto's arms and began to walk away. "Come on!" she called over her shoulder.

Naruto ran after her. "Wait. Where are we going?"

"To my my house," Sakura said as if it was no big deal.

_What?_ Naruto thought. _She's never wanted to go anywhere with me. Oh well, at least I'll get to see her room!_

* * *

Sakura's room was not what Naruto was expecting. There were shelves everywhere and they were filled with books, and not just any books, but books about the shinobi arts. The shelf next to him held titles like Advanced Strategies of the Basis Bushin and Advanced Theories of Chakra Flow. On the self below that were books like Practical Physics as Applied to Shuriken and Applied Cryptography. "Where did you get all these?" Naruto asked. They were not the type of books he ever saw in bookstores.

"Oh that," said Sakura from the other shelf where she was putting away her new books. She laughed. "Ninja bookstores usually hide themselves with a weak genjutsu to keep civilians from finding their shinobi books." Sakura turned around and sat on her bed. "Now talk. I know you're supposedly "banished," she air-quoted with her fingers, "but that's really not what's happening." Sakura shrugged. "Other then that, I don't know anything. So, what's going on?"

_At least she already knows that; it'll make this easier. _Naruto took a deep breath. "Long story short, some guy on the council wants to get rid of me and the opportunity finally came up. Then Jiraiya-"

"Wait," Sakura interrupted, "This guy... you wouldn't happen to know who he is? And when you say he 'want's to get rid of you', do you mean that he just wants you out of Konoha or that he wants you dead?"

"Um, the guy's name is Shimera Danzou and I don't think he wants me dead. Why?" he asked when he saw Sakura's shocked face.

"Because," said Sakura weakly, "it makes so much sense."

"What do you mean?"

Sakura sighed and pulled her hair behind her ears. "If you know that much about shinobi politics you wouldn't know about Danzou," she snorted. "All I really know for sure about him is that he's one of three retired shinobi called the council. Their job is to advise the Hokage, but they also have quite a bit of political power because they've been advising the Hokage since the Sandaime took the position." Sakura paused before saying slowly, "There are also unconfirmed rumors that Danzou didn't agree with the Sadaime's policies or the Sandaime's choice of Yondaime."

"How could that be?" _Every ninja is loyal to the Hokage._

"I don't know, but it probably means nothing" explained Sakura. "It's a rumor after all and if it was true, Danzou would have been killed."

"Oh. Good." Naruto sighed in relief.

"Yeah," Sakura agreed. "What were you saying Jiraiya did?"

Naruto laughed. "Ero-sennin reminded Baa-chan that he wanted to take me on a two year training trip in three months. Since I was going to be leaving Konoha anyway, they decided that I would leave early to make it look like I was actually being banished and meet up with Ero-sennin later. While we're gone, Baa-chan'll be straitening out everything with the advisers."

"So you'll be leaving for a couple years to train while everything at this end is being taken care of and then you'll be coming back?" clarified Sakura.

"Yep!" Naruto grinned.

"Good." Sakura smiled. "We just got Sasuke back; it would be a pain if you left."

"Oh!" Naruto jumped to his feet. "Sasuke said he needed to talk to us and wanted to meet us at the entrance to the Uchiha District at 1800 hours."

Sakura's eyes widened. "Why?"

Naruto shrugged. "I don't know." Sasuke had never involved them in his private life and Naruto remembered that the Uchiha District had been abandoned after the Uchiha Massacre had taken place. "He just said he wanted to talk to us and he also wanted us not to tell anyone."

Sakura blinked. "That's really weird."

"Yeah, I know. Sasuke was acting weird when he told me about it too."

"Weird how?"

"Well, he came to talk to me at Ichiraku's and even ordered a bowl of ramen."

Sakura stared at him. "Are you sure it was Sasuke?"

"Yeah, it was his handwriting on the note."

"What note? And why didn't you tell me earlier about this, baka!"

"Heh heh," Naruto scratched the back of his head. "This one." He handed Sakura the note Sasuke had given him.

Sakura took the note and looked it over. "It's Sauske's all right." She gave the note back to Naruto. "I'll be there." Sakura got up off her bed and began piling books on it. "Now where did that book on the First Secret War go..." she mumbled to herself.

Naruto stared at her and shrugged; Sakura always ignored him. "Okay. See you later." He stepped out onto the window ledge. "Oh," he turned around. "You wouldn't happen to know where I could get sebon would you. Ero-senin said to get some and I can't find any where I usually go."

Sakura looked up from her book. "There's a weapon place over in the East District that has them." She went back to her book.

"Thanks Sakura," Naruto called. He climbed up the wall to the roof and grinned as he bounded into the village. At least Sakura wouldn't be upset when he left.

* * *

When his watch hit 5:45, Naruto made his way towards the Uchiha District via the rooftops. A few blocks away from it, he saw Sakura walking on the streets. He jumped down to her. She looked at him, nodded and then looked away. They walked down the street in silence until they came up to the entrance of the Uchiha District. A familiar looking konochi was leaning against a wall.

"What is Anko doing here?" Sakura whispered.

Naruto looked at where Sakura was pointing and gulped when he saw the crazy woman who had licked his blood at the Chuunin Exams. "I have no idea," he made out, "but I hope she has nothing to do with us."

"Too bad then,"said a voice behind them. Naruto and Sakura turned around to see Anko standing behind them. "Sasuke asked me to meet you here and he should be showing up any minute."

Naruto raised his eyebrows at Sakura and she shrugged back. Naruto looked back at Anko. "Why are you here?" he asked.

Anko grinned and began twirling a kunai through her fingers. "You'll find out later. Hey Sasuke!"

Naruto and Sakura turned around to see Sasuke coming out the gate. "Sasuke," Naruto said, "please tell me she isn't coming with us."

Sasuke looked between Naruto and Anko. "She is. Let's go," he said to Naruto and Sakura. "We should hurry."

Naruto and Sakura looked at each other and began to follow Sasuke. Anko climbed to the roof of a nearby building. "See you there!" She called before racing across the rooftops.

Sasuke led Naruto and Sakura through the gate and into the deserted Uchiha District. They walked past empty shops that ranged from weapon shops to bakeries. The most prominent building was the burnt-out skeleton of the Uchiha Military Police headquarters. Eventually, the commercial district gave way to houses and mansions. Sasuke turned down a street that passed between several houses and led to a bridge that spanned a river. On the other side of the river was a shrine. Sasuke took a deep breath and crossed the bridge with Naruto and Sakura right behind him. He led them into the shrine and pulled up a tatami mat on the right side of the room. Underneath it was a trapdoor. Sasuke opened it and looked up at Naruto and Sakura. "Go down and go to the hideout at the end of the hall. I'll join you." They nodded and went through the trapdoor.

Waiting for them in the hideout was Anko. "You guys didn't see anyone did you?" she asked. For once, she was serious. Sasuke shook his head. "Good, I didn't meet anyone either."

"What's going on?" Naruto demanded.

Anko looked at Sasuke. "You explain. It was your idea to get them involved." She leaned against a wall and began filing her nails with a kunai.

Sasuke sighed and looked at Naruto before looking away again. "I found something important that had to do with Itachi and the... Massacre." He paused. "It's big... big enough to cause a war if other people found out about it." Sasuke bit his lip. "I need to tell someone about it and... you're the only people I can trust; I can't tell anyone else." He looked Naruto and Sakura in the eyes.

Naruto blinked and sat down on the floor. "Okay." He looked up at Sasuke expectantly.

Sakura was more skeptical. "Why can't you tell anyone else?" she asked.

Anko answered in place of Sasuke. "Because if he did, he'd get killed for knowing what he knows as would you once you know what he knows."

Sakura started at that. "Should we know about it?"

"Someone has to," said Anko. "It's the only way to permanently fix the problem; you'll understand once you see what the information is."

Naruto's eyes darted back and forth before he looked at Sasuke. "Let's see it."

Anko nodded and took out a scroll. She put her hand to it and several files appeared out of thin air. Slowly, Naruto and Sakura walked over to Anko and Sasuke. Naruto reached for the first one, opened it and began to read.

* * *

AN: My characterization for Sakura mostly comes from several aspects about her I noticed in the Chuunin Exams. In the first test, we find she's smart enough to pass a test no genin should be able to pass. Oddly enough, Sasuke apparently knows she is that smart and doesn't even worry about how she'll do. As none of that info was taught in the academy, she had to learn it somewhere. She also scored the highest out of all the girls in the academy. As that would include Ino and Hanita, both of who are heirs to ninja clans, I think Sakura would have to be a nerd when it comes to shinobi. And in the preliminaries, Kakashi mentions that while she knows just the basic jutsu, she knows them perfectly. That sounds to me like Sakura has been doing something productive with her time.

When you have both civilians and ninja living side-by-side in a ninja village, rumors and mis-information have to exist if just to keep the civilians from not finding out about classified information. A rumor that Danzou is not loyal to the Hokage doesn't mean anything, especially when the Hokage acts as if he trusts Danzou.

Parings: My muse managed to fix my OC "problem" (Thank you for the idea, Vathara!) and in the process I found out who Anko will be paired with. I'm also 80% sure of who Sasuke is going to end up with, but Naruto and Sakura are still open to suggestions.

* * *

**Jutsu Explanations  
**I don't like giving technical explanations of jutsu in the story as it wrecks the flow of action because the characters already know most of this stuff. I'll mostly do this for the common jutsu that have different ways of working depending on the author. If you don't have to read these if you don't want to.

**Shunshin no Jutsu** - - According to canon, this is simply speeding up your body with chakra to the point that the body can not be seen moving, hence "body flicker". Naturally, some people are faster then other people. It should be noticed that this limits the use of shunshin as there is certain terrain that is nearly impossible to move through silently at fast speeds. The interior of a building would be a good example.

Thanks for reading!


End file.
